


Not Set in Jelly

by defeatedbyabridge



Category: Red Dwarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defeatedbyabridge/pseuds/defeatedbyabridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer has a problem. A Lister-shaped problem. And this time, no amount of holographic whiskey or psychotic screaming fits will help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Set in Jelly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kangeiko

 

 

Rimmer wasn't happy.

OK, so Red Dwarf wasn't exactly state of the art. Holly had the IQ of a Russian parking inspector, stunk slightly less, but was slightly more difficult to communicate with. Things regularly went wrong - even some things that Rimmer couldn't pin on Lister - such as the morning he woke up with fish covering his entire body, and slithering THROUGH his entire body, because the Cat had wandered into some sort of multi-parallel space-time inversion and had temporarily become God. Each fish sang, "Eat me!" in the key of Bleedingears minor.

But this, **this** , was wrong on a whole new level.

"Heeeeeelp," he called again, not so much because he expected any actual help, but for something to do. The oddly-dressed person standing on his foot scrutinised him with great interest, and took yet another photo with the camera in her index fingernail. He assumed it was a camera. Perhaps she had some kind of nose infection and was showing him the results. It certainly looked like she'd sneezed all over her outfit.

He'd been sitting at the table, attempting the Junior Book of Space's Junior Giant Crossword for Junior Spacemen Who Love Fun Fun Fun. Holly had made a holographic version for him, though Rimmer wondered about the quality of the copy. As far as he knew 'sun' had only three letters in it, not twenty seven and a half.

Four people had appeared out of nowhere, including one who stood without apparent discomfort in the table with her foot on Rimmer's. And now he couldn't get up. He'd waved. He'd hollered. He'd asked them politely who the smeg they were.

They'd ignored him. They talked only to each other.

"He's quite fascinating," she said to her companions. Her voice sounded bizarre, like she was underwater. A woman by the far wall with her hair in thick, green, plaits down her back nodded in a 'not interested, smeg off' sort of way, and poked her skinny finger into the noticeboard.

She had bushy eyebrows. They all did. Funny.

A man by the door took notes on clear plastic, and another man in a rainbow suit set off the loo. Mr Rainbow stepped back in alarm as it chuttered and splugged and sent up a fountain of (mostly) clean water.

They seemed to be holograms, like him, but unlike him were able to interact with their environment to a limited extent.

Their environment included his foot, which was sparking and fizzing in a most alarming way. He couldn't get free. He'd considered detaching the foot, but he'd never managed to do that on purpose and couldn't remember how he'd done it the last time Lister had made him furious.

"Holly," he called. "Holllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-" oh, great, now his smegging light bee was malfunctioning. "-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

Dave Lister, wearing his best green t-shirt, which only showed one nipple through the rips, leaned on the doorframe and stuck his head into the room. "Y'know, I heard what sounded like the mating call of a rhinoceros on helium," he said conversationally, "and I thought to myself, what's Rimmer doing mating with a rhinoceros on helium? Is the walrus washing her hair tonight?"

"-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-"

Lister grinned. One of those disgusting monkey grins that showed the remnants of the curried cornflakes he'd had for breakfast.

Rimmer wriggled. He twitched. He grabbed at his stomach, in a futile attempt to reset his light bee. He tried to make himself cough. He clapped his hands over his mouth.

That annoying tic under his left eye started up again, and he still couldn't make himself stop squealing.

Lister yawned, and scratched his crotch. "Did you realise you've got a weird looking woman standing on your foot?"

Rimmer smacked himself on the back of the head, stopped squealing, and bellowed thankfully, "You smegging gimboid, get in here and get this woman off me!"

Rubbing his forehead in mock surprise, Lister said, "Smeg! If I had a pack of ciggies for every time you'd asked me that. . . I'd have one pack of ciggies." He did a little dance.

"Ha smegging ha."

Lister sauntered into the room and inspected the woman in the table with great interest and a suavely grunted, "Hello."

She raised her eyebrows at him - why was it always Lister who got the women? - and smiled. Which was considerably more acknowledgement than she'd given Rimmer's attempts to communicate. The other three crowded around and poked at Lister.

"Lister," breathed Mr Rainbow.

"I thought he'd be smellier," said Manky Green Plaits. "Hairier, too."

"Perhaps the olfactory interface is malfunctioning," suggested the other man, who had no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. "The physical integration is obviously incomplete." He waved a hand through Lister's bum to demonstrate.

Lister leaped back with a squawk. "Hey, not on a first date, man!"

Manky Green Plaits sniffed, and rubbed her nose on the back of her hand. "I believe the integration was left incomplete for safety reasons - we should only observe, not interact. We risk altering the timeline."

"But pissing me off is just fine," Rimmer said. "Yes? Is that right? Altering the timeline is ever so wrong, but gimboid future people messing up my life, getting in my face, that's all jolly good fun, eh? HOLLY! WHAT THE SMEG IS GOING ON!"

"So that makes him," Table Woman pointed at Rimmer, who rolled his eyes in exasperation at her ignoring him yet again, "Edward J Rummer, then. Mr Rummer. I thought his nostrils would be bigger. Didn't Our Lord Lister's _Days on the Dwarf_ describe his nostrils as 'thinly flared gateways to hell'?"

"Holly's off-line," Lister said, sombre for once. "I don't know what's wrong. I heard the Cat howl before I came in here, too, maybe he's got visitors as well."

"Yes, chapter three, verse seven thousand, four hundred and fifty eight, I believe," said Manky Green Plaits.

"'Our Lord Lister'," Rimmer repeated slowly. A horrible suspicion was lurking around the back of his mind, thinking about possibly becoming a thought.

"What's wrong with that, 'Rummer'?" Lister said. He wiggled a hand around Rimmer, trying to get Table Woman to move, but she merely watched him with fascination. Lister's hand didn't cause any sparks, unlike her foot in Rimmer's.

Lister lost interest and sat down. He grabbed his guitar. "I think they're from some future time," he said as he played Symphony in P Flat.

Another man materialised. This one seemed older. His bushy eyebrows were grey. He wore glasses and carried a clipboard. Probably a scientist, Rimmer decided. "Oh, good, good," the new guy said to the others. "You're all here. Now, this is an important opportunity, so tell me what you have observed."

Mr Bland raised a hand. "They appear smaller and sweatier than we had expected," he said self-importantly. "Also, there is less hair and odour."

"Do you find this display suitable for school children?"

"Rummer has exhibited some aggressive tendencies," said Table Woman briskly, as she walked through Rimmer. He got an awful view of the inside of her head as it passed through him, which left him gasping. He reeled back from the table. "But any one of our students would find him amusing rather than threatening."

"Oh, that's great, that is," Rimmer grumbled.

Manky Green Plaits said, "Our Lord Lister is considerably more musical than even we had hoped. I would welcome the chance to study him further."

Lister's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. "Likewise, babe." He shifted in his seat, and unobtrusively flexed his biceps.

"Lister, there's no need to show her your manly physique," Rimmer told him. "No doubt they have bags of sand in her century."

The Cat raced into the room. "Heyguystherearestrangehalfmeltypeoplehereandtheysmellweird - oh. You've got some, too."

"Ah, the Cat," said the Professor. "Note the vestigial claws! Almost as large as in the picture book by Our Lord Lister."

"What's all this Our Lord Lister smeg?" Rimmer demanded.

Holly shimmered into life. "Wotcha," he said, ignoring the visitors as they crowded around him. He grinned cheerfully. "Did you lot know I have a backup system?"

Lister shook his head.

"I think I can explain who they are."

"Go on," Lister said.

"They're from the future."

"Thank you ever so much," said Rimmer. "Perhaps next you could announce your discovery that Lister is a smeghead? Or that we're on a spaceship, which flies - in **space**!"

"Oi, that's uncalled for," Holly protested. "I've traced their path back to their home, using some weird little curly light things I found in the computer. They've only projected themselves here. Some kind of museum trip, I reckon. The path seems to be closing so I dunno if we'll see them again."

"Are they human?"

"Mostly. They appear to have descended from Lister's DNA. He is, after all, the last living human. As far as we know."

Rimmer had to sit down again. The eyebrows. . . the hair. . . they didn't all have dreadlocks, but they all had manky bushy hair, and oh hell, no. . . "Lister saved the smegging human race," he groaned. "They're all Listers."

"I think the link is fading," said Table Woman. She took about twenty quick photos with her finger.

The visitors shimmered, and disappeared.

Rimmer wailed, "They're all smegging Listers!" He collapsed in on himself into a small ball on the floor, and shook.

"It's only one possible future," said Holly calmly. "Anything could happen. The future's not set in, in, what's that thing the future gets set in?"

"Jelly?" the Cat suggested.

"Well, whatever it is, the future's not set in it."

Rimmer uncurled himself. "Really?" he asked in a quavering voice.

"Steady," Lister said. "This is a bit unfair! A universe full of me sounds smegging unreal!"

"Shhh," Holly warned. "Why don't you go off and listen to your Hammond organ records," he said kindly to Rimmer.

Rimmer shuffled out the door, muttering, "Not set in jelly. It's not set in jelly."

When he'd gone, Lister asked, "What you told him - was that true? Do we really not know?"

"Nah," Holly said, grinning. "I could tell that much. It's gonna happen. Sooner or later."

 

 

 


End file.
